I like exploiting the economy in World of Warcraft.
I have not posted for a while, so I thought I would drop you a line while I waited for my application to finish scanning the Auction House in the game. It is very important to know what price certain objects are going for or have gone for in the past when I am about to place items up for auction. This application that I use scans all of the auctions currently up and saves all of the information to a database on my computer. Whenever I move my cursor over an item, it provides me with all auction house data for that item that I have collected. It tells me how many of those same items are currently for sale, what the average starting bid is, what the average buyout amount is, how many of the auctions for that item have been bidded on, what I can sell that item to a vendor for, and suggests prices if I were to place the same item up for sale. This information has provided me many chances to corner markets, create monoploies, and exploit the needs and banks of other players looking for essential items. This is just about all that I do in this game anymore. I do not kill anything, I do not complete missions or quests. My character earns almost no experience at all. I spend almost all of my time researching the current economy and trying to find opportunities to make money.
The currency is set up thusly: 1 gold = 100 silver = 10,000 copper. In other words, it is based on values of 100.
Last night, I purchased a rare armored vest from another player for 25 gold. After researching the item, its market, and its uses, I put the item up for bid at the Auction House with an initial bid price of 75 gold and a buyout price of 90 gold. 2 hours later, the item had sold at the buyout price. Folks, that was a 360% return on my investment. I need 110 gold to purchase a horse and get trained to ride it when my character reaches level 40, and I have been at level 28 for weeks now. I have done the same thing with a couple of other items, but none have been so lucrative as this one.
I really love diving into the economy of these MMO’s. Something about it is more satisfying than reaching the highest level possible with my character.
Brad and I, when we played Star Wars Galaxies, actually had meetings with other guilds to specifically discuss the economy on our server and how we proposed to fix it. Some people might find this pretty nerdy, but I enjoyed it. I know Brad did, too.
The economy in World of Warcraft is noticeably more simple, but there are larger amounts of idiots participating in it when compared to that of Star Wars Galaxies.
I regularly purchase all of the available auctions for a certain item and then place them all back up for auction again right away at seriously inflated prices. We are talking 300-500% increases. No laws are broken here when I eliminate competition Micro$oft style. I only choose items that I know that people will need and that are in short supply.
It is funny to watch prices fluctuate. I once flooded the auction house with light leather, a commodity that many people use for low level crafting professions. About half of the total auctions that I put up sold, and all of the new auctions that other people had put up since mine had prices 40-50% of what they had been. The price system for light leather has not yet returned to what it was before I broke it down so expertly.
In summation, taking financial advantage of people in games is really fun.